


The distance between the sun and the moon is the same as the spaces between us

by bevsmrsh



Category: IT 2017
Genre: F/M, Internalized Homophobia, M/M, Richie’s popular and Eddie’s a loser kinda, artist Eddie au, general homophobia, im taking influences from lots of different places, sort of unrequited, tags will be added as needed
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-08-17
Updated: 2018-11-11
Packaged: 2019-06-28 13:17:33
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 3,815
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15708003
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bevsmrsh/pseuds/bevsmrsh
Summary: Eddie Kaspbrak has a very big secret that he’s managed to keep hidden for as long as he can, but when popular kid Richie Tozier starts showing an interest in him, it’s hard to stay in the dark. They’re worlds apart, but the spaces between them are getting smaller.





	1. Every Little Thing He Does Is Magic

**Author's Note:**

> ;)
> 
> My name is grace! Find me on tumblr: @bevsmrsh

Eddie Kaspbrak found himself isolated to the point of no return a few years ago. He had very few friends, and the ones he had were fellow outcasts for one reason or another, but something that kept him apart from everyone else he knew was a single, simple, six letter word: secret. He noticed it first in 6th grade, when his eyes didn’t cling to short skirts and when lipstick wasn’t something he craved to have pressed onto him. He never expressed any of this to his friends, to the other losers, but he was sure at least a few of the more observant ones had realized that he was unlike them. That he was the only boy in all of Derry that acted like this.

 

He fell in love often, but it was never with people; he loved the sky and autumn and the way shadows were thrown across the wall when the sun wrapped its large fingers around trees. Footsteps, cold water on an empty stomach, curly black hair. His fascination with how the body moved turned slowly into an eager and honest wish to be touched. To be popular and seen and wide-eyed with love and admiration like his friends tended to be. But they couldn’t give him that. No fiercely independent ginger with a background of constant abuse, no stuttering single armed brother mess, no anxious curly haired bird loving boy could give him that. They could only yearn for it with him — for him.

 

Sometimes he wished they knew.

 

The first, the only person Eddie had ever fallen in love with could give him the entire universe if he asked for it. Richie Tozier, tall, curly hair, thick glasses, a senior like him. Richie was all easy smiles and laughter and kissing pretty girls at parties and not getting in trouble for holding other ones later. The girls never stayed, but the panicked eating away at Eddie’s heart did. Richie could be his way out. He could be the best thing that ever happened to him.

 

 

They shared a few classes — math, English, lunch — but they sat on opposite ends of the world. This difference of location did not stop Eddie from drawing people that had an incredible likeness to Richie though, and it definitely didn’t stop him from doodling “Eddie Tozier” over and over again in as many fonts, colors, and sizes as possible. A few times, slow times in class, he’d look up from his work or his drawings and notice that Richie was staring at him, or glancing at him, and even more often he’d see him watch him start his walk home with his friends from the shade of a tree, cigarette hanging loosely from his mouth, hands tucked in his pockets and conversation elsewhere.

 

The thought of Richie looking at him — _him_ — made his skin burn and his heart pound in his ears. He’d spend hours upon hours thinking about it, smiling wildly and laughing out “Richie Tozier stared at me!” his hands would occupy themselves from the idea and he, nearly every day, would pray that his mother didn’t bust into the room (she’d broken the lock off his door years ago and nearly refused to knock).

 

Senior year was going to be the best year of his life. He already had offers from art schools all along the upper east coast, he could to New York if he wanted to, and his friends were almost equally as excited to leave Derry as him. The only thing that stood in his way was the undeniable fact that he had had a giant crush on Richie for three years and it was now or never. He needed to make a move or else he’d completely lose his chance.

 

The earth turned slowly for a good few weeks before the perfect excuse came up, before the planets and stars aligned and whatever was up in the sky smiled down on him: they had to write a comprehensive essay on a motif from Macbeth. Eddie was well known for being quiet, well mannered, and willing to write essays for people if they’d pay him and leave him alone in social settings. Richie was well known for being bad at writing essays. The perfect storm.

 

It took a few silent seconds before Eddie realized how to approach the situation. He softly ripped a page from his notebook and began to write. Stan and Greta and a million other people passed the note up to Richie.

 

On the paper, in careful handwriting, was a simple proposition: _I can write your Macbeth essay if you’ll be my live model for art class._

 

Richie read the words slowly, staring blankly at the page. His pen moved much quicker than Eddie would have liked.

 

On the paper, in messy half-cursive, was a simple reply: _dont you already draw me enough?_

 

The dot did not line up with the rest of the questions mark. Eddie’s face was turning red and he could feel his heart begin to race, his eyes slowly traveling up from the crinkled lines to the face of Richie.

 

Fuck.

 

 _Fuck_.

 

A final bell rang signaling the end of the day, causing Eddie to jump. Richie’s long legs made it over to him before he could even rush out of the room.

 

The artificial light glinted off of his glasses and only made the goofy grin spreading across his face more endearing.

 

“I’m free after school, if you’re not busy.”

 

The fireworks in Eddie’s brain exploded into millions and millions of colorful lights. Is this really what it felt like to be in love with someone? How could you hate this? The second he started feeling it, he was addicted. His favorite drug was Richie Tozier’s easy smiles and bright-eyed enthusiasm, his charisma, the way he bit his lip when he listened to people speak and how he must have looked the first time he was in love.

 

“I can meet you at the west entrance and we can walk to my house from there?”

 

“Sounds like a plan, Eds.” He winked — _winked_ — before turning back around to retrieve his bag and exit the classroom.

 

Why did it have to be him? Why couldn’t it have been any of the girls he’d kissed and pretended to like to make them happy? More importantly: how was he going to explain this to his mother?


	2. Coast Line

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> WEIRD THAT IM HERE HUH

Richie was a much different person than he had imagined he’d be. He didn’t talk nearly as much as he did in school, and when he did his voice was soft and neutral, no attention being unnecessarily drawn to them. He reminded Eddie of Bev. His public and private personas were insanely different, and there was something incredibly empty in him that Eddie wanted to reach out and grab.

 

The sky is a glittering blue-white oil painting, his window is open, and Richie’s back is pressed to the wall in order for him to lean out of the room and smoke. Everything through the window seemed like it wasn’t real, like this room was the only place in the universe that had living things in it — everything else was where the world became dreams and bleary eyes.

 

“So?” Richie asked once he finished smoking.

 

“S- so?” Eddie blinked out of his head, he forgot he had been staring. It was so strange to be this close to Richie. In his house. In his bedroom. He’d spent years dreaming about this moment.

 

“Your wallpaper’s ugly.”

 

“My mom won’t let me paint over it. I’ve wanted to fix it for a long time.”

 

“Oh yeah?”

 

“Yeah.”

 

Richie stood with unimaginable speed for someone who had just been lounging so casually only seconds before. In a single, large, swooping motion he found a permanent marker and scribbled **_RICHIE WAS HERE_** in big black letters. It felt like a ghost had just been placed in the room for an undetermined amount of time, the words wouldn’t come off unless he covered them.

 

He didn’t want to cover them.

 

This was the first rush of defiance Eddie had ever had, the insatiable need to press his fingertips to the ink and write his own name on the wall below it was suddenly eating at him. Everything was always eating away at him, the hesitant anxiety would kill him one day.

 

“Why did you do that?”

 

“You have to paint it now? No one’s just gonna keep my shitting handwriting on their wall.” Richie always laughed very loudly, even when they were alone.

 

The laughter and words on the wall in an otherwise quiet house was overloading his senses a little bit, but he didn’t dare complain. Rather, Eddie started laughing right along with him.

 

“Yeah, your handwriting is pretty shitty.”

 

“Hey! I’m the only one who’s allowed to make fun of me! It’s my job!”

 

The wildness and reckless itch of movement found in Richie was contagious. Eddie grabbed a red marker and used handwriting meant for billboards to write _**EDDIE ISN’T HERE**_ next to Richie’s scrawl. Suddenly they were on opposite ends of the room, Richie scribbling words from songs and Eddie making freeform poems as though he himself were given the right to be so open minded, so in the space of Walt Whitman and all of those other old men with long beards and their secrets and their words. Elegant paragraphs strung between himself and Richie, his radio crackling along _Stan’s Awesome Mix_ (made up of Stan’s favorite songs — mostly retropop and less ABBA than expected).

 

“Do you ever think about how we’re not gonna be in high school anymore in, like, four months?” Richie asked after they were nearly consumed by marker fumes, both trying to take deep breaths out the window.

 

“Not really? High school sucks.” Eddie shrugged.

 

“I mean yeah it sucks but like... we’re never gonna have this kinda thing again? Like nothing’s ever gonna be like high school. Just college and working until you die.”

 

“Thank god. I mean, like, yeah I know I’m gonna look back later and be like ‘man I should have appreciated high school more!’ but right now? I’m so happy to get out of it. There’s nothing for me here. I don’t have anything in Derry that’s worth staying for. I’m gonna go to school in Rhode Island and I’ll live in Manhattan and just... make art for the rest of my life. And I’ll have a cat or something.”

 

“Yeah, and you’ll wear clothes that are too small and have dumb tiny sunglasses only wear, like, slippers or something.”

 

“Exactly!” They chirped with laughter as the scent finally began to waft out. “So what do you wanna do with your life?”

 

“See, I hate that fucking question. It’s just like… HEY! COMMIT YOURSELF TO SOMETHING HIPPY! And I feel like I don’t get to actually choose something I wanna do. I wanna do… musical comedy shows! Real nihilistic shit, y’know? And, like, I guess if I had to choose an actual profession I’d wanna be a chef or something. I make a mean meatball, spaghetti boy!”

 

Eddie had to focus on everything at once to get the full effect of what Richie was saying to him. Musical comedy, okay. Hippy, okay. Nihilism, okay. Chef, okay. “Spaghetti boy?” He raised a brow and Richie cracked up.

 

“Yeah! Spaghetti boy! Eddie? Spaghetti? Get it? They rhyme. Eddie Spaghetti! Do you like that one? I’m gonna use it I think. I love it. It’s fun. You seem less like an old man with a nickname like that.”

 

Eddie’s lips flapped as he breathed out, laughing vaguely before standing and going back to his wall of poetry, staring up and deciding to go for his paints as Richie lit up a cigarette — he stood and went to his own wall, working again on the lyrics to songs. His own songs, at this point, since he had run out of songs he liked, apparently.

 

“Hey, Rich, can you maybe stop-“ Creaking. Creaking. Creaking. Creaking. Front door creaking. Floorboards creaking. Front door slamming. High pitch shrieking. “EDDIEBEAR! I’M HOME! COME GET GROCERIES OUT OF THE CAR FOR ME!” Eddie felt his heart stop and all he could see was red. He looked up at his walls and swallowed hard. He was so consumed by freedom and creative liberties that he forgot about the consequences of acting without asking. Eddie set down his paints carefully. “JUST A SECOND, MOM!” He pointed to the window and gestured wildly. “Get the fuck out of my room right now thank you so much for coming over we can actually do work next time okay I’m so sorry please don’t tell anyone.”

 

Richie gave a lopsided smile and headed to the window, giving a little salut and climbing out as Eddie rushed out of his room and down to help his mother.

 

“Did you have a nice day, Eddiebear?”

 

“It was… an interesting one, I think.”


	3. Well Alrighty Aphrodite

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I rly like this one

* * *

Richie met him at the entrance of the school the next day. “Did she kill you? Was it super obvious I left?” Bev nearly choked on her water.   
  
“No, it was fine. She didn’t even know you were there.” Eddie shrugged, noting and not fully acknowledging Bev’s explosion of everything.   
  
“Cool. Do you wanna hang out again today?”   
  
“Sounds good. Wait for me after math?”   
  
“Gotcha, Eddie spaghetti!” Richie winked and pointed finger guns at him before turning off to the side to get with his friends, to become a different person again.   
  
“Richie Tozier like Richard ‘my best friends are cigarettes and rich kids’ Tozier is friends with you now?” Bev was all harsh whispers and sharp edges.   
  
“We had to do an assignment for class. I’m just helping him.”   
  
“Just helping him? That’s not the kind of guy you just help. He wants something from you. That kinda guy isn’t just nice.”   
  
“We were all friends in elementary school. Why can’t we just be friends again? People change.”   
  
“Yeah, that’s the problem.”   
  
“He’s not a bad guy.”   
  
“You thought that about Greta too and look where we are now.” She gestured to Greta and her friends who were crowded around a locker, glancing back at them and offering a small fleeting smile. Bev look horrified, glancing back at them again once they walked by to see if they were laughing. “The world is falling apart. Did she just smile at us? Your boyfriend is really making a positive change in this town.”   
  
Was he really so obvious about his feelings? Was it open and out there? When did he start letting people in? “Hopefully he is.”   
  
Chemistry with Bill and Stan was always incredibly boring, but this time instead of working they were discussing their plans for Halloween. Eddie’s friends were not friends with the rest of his friends, so he intended on getting them all together in one place and have them finally meet.   
  
Next was math. Eddie sat on the far end of the room, his table partner just happened to switch seats so Richie could sit next to him. Typical. “What’re you doing for Halloween?” They were friends. Richie counted.   
  
“You and I are going to a Sally Mueller party because I know damn well you’ve never been to one.”   
  
“Can my friends come?”   
  
“Are they losers like you?”   
  
“Some of them.” Eddie smiled slightly. Richie smelled nice. Their elbows were pressed together.   
  
“Then they can absolutely come. I’m gonna be a werewolf, so like, don’t come as the same thing as me. Werewolves are kinda my thing.”   
  
“Who’s thing is werewolves? Werewolves are lame.”   
  
“Not when I’m a werewolf, baby.” It was pronounced like bay-bee but Eddie never wanted Richie to call him by another name ever again. _Baby_.   
  
“What time should I be there?”   
  
“I’ll come over after school and we can work on your project and then we can go. Yeah?”   
  
“Yeah. Sounds good.”   
  
Richie left sky colored imprints and deep orange trails of energy behind him, disturbing the natural static of existing in hypoallergenic fabrics and freshly administered baby wipes. With him, Eddie smelled less like an inpatient ward and more like a teenager who was allowed to drive past sunset. One that wasn’t Atheist so much as a Non-Believer. A chance at being the Headlights, not the deer caught in them.   
  
This time hanging out to work on the project was searching through Eddie’s attic for a costume, or at least the pieces to what was once a costume, and it turned into Eddie trying on various capes and glasses and fake teeth and old shirts. Richie would laugh at him and dive into old dusty notebooks and boxes of clothes.   
  
“What’s all the shit up here anyways?”   
  
“A lot of it’s my dad’s. He was a botanist. It was pretty cool I guess. That’s all his clothes and notes and books — my mom wanted to get rid of all of it but she just never got around to actually donating it.”   
  
“Ah.” Richie nodded like he had been through the exact same thing. Eddie had never actually seen his house, but he knew the Toziers. They were much more present in elementary school.   
  
  
Leaving the house in ripped up jeans and a Hawaiian shirt was a bizarre feeling — especially when the shirt belonged to Richie and had just been taken off in order to wear one of Eddie’s dad’s shirts. The mist from the coming rain made halos around the systematic street lamps, and Eddie felt even stranger than before.   
  
Bright rings bouncing off of Richie’s glasses told him that this was real, that this wasn’t just a dream or some stupid story he was making up.   
  
The lights never turn on in his head.   
  
“So what are you like... good at? Not like I think you’re useless, I’ve just never seen you do, like, I dunno. Smart stuff? You said you can cook but like... what else?”   
  
“Piano. I’m really good at piano. And being funny and shit. And sewing weirdly enough?”   
  
Eddie nodded solemnly. Piano and sewing didn’t really seem like things Richie would admit to being good at. They weren’t... boy things. They were just things. “I play piccolo and flute and shit.”   
  
“I know. My friends make me go to all the football games. Being the only guy who’s a flute kinda makes you stand out, Eds.”   
  
“I like to stand out. I’m good at it.”   
  
“I think everyone knows that.”   
  
  
The draw of pounding bass and electricity radiated down the streets. Bright lights and screaming girls and hostile guys. It was a different kind of fear that you could completely fall in love with. Eddie was ready to fall in love with noise, with the static of movement and placement of limbs and buzz of cheap beer. He could already taste orange on the tip of his tongue, spreading easily to red. Orange made him anxious.

They entered the party and were almost immediately handed drinks, red solo cups with an indescribable copper colored liquid in it -- it felt just like a movie. He hadn’t realized how remarkably difficult ABBA was when it was blasting that loudly. Everything was on the highest level possible, the people and drinks and smells and sounds. The back of his throat burned from the wall of smoke Richie had just pulled him through in their adventure towards the dining room. Sally had an awfully nice house.

 

Sweat sparkled on every exposed bit of skin in the house, the people and fluorescents had gotten a little warm he supposed. Why else would people be half dressed in public? Richie pounded knuckles with a dark skinned kid that Eddie knew vaguely from the football team and a previously unofficial semi-crush from Stan and then introduced him to Ben, also from the football team, while Eddie was far too busy getting a contact high off of the theater kids standing next to him.

 

“You’re the quarterback, right?” Eddie’s mind was elsewhere, but he was anything but rude to new people.

 

“Yep. Ben here’s our Safety. Hey, didn’t we have chem together last year?”

 

“We did! You sat in front of my friend Stan and I.”

 

Mike smiled. He had one of those wonderful smiles with impossibly well kept teeth. “He was the one who drew birds all over his tests, right?”

 

“And the Mr. Cramer-”

 

“Would get so fucking mad he looked like his head would explode?”

 

“Yeah!” Laughing felt nice. It relieved some of the pressure in his chest. He could see why Stan had so many feelings about this guy. Everything about his was pretty. “It’s nice to see you again. It’s been a while.”

 

“Mike’s a little too busy touring colleges for any of us to see him.” Ben cut in, which received an eye roll and little push of the head from Mike.

 

“Don’t listen to him. I’m supposed to be hosting a beer-pong tournament in a few minutes so we’re gonna go, but you seem cool, Kaspbrak. Don’t be a stranger.”

 

“Noted.” Eddie gave an approving nod and received a nod back from both Ben and Mike, the former being considerably more visibly drunk than the other. In a matter of seconds, he was scooped up in Richie’s guiding arm and the football players completely disappeared from sight. “They were nice.”

 

“Ben and Mike? Yeah, they’re always great. When’re your friends getting here?”

 

“They said they’d show up when they show up.” Eddie shrugged. He didn’t quite like that it mattered to Richie, but it wasn’t too much to worry about. “Where’re we going?”

 

“Basement! Gotta hang out with my theater friends, don’t we?”

 

“Do we?”

 

“They have the  _ best  _ pot in town. And it’s like… way quieter downstairs.”

 

“Oh. Right. Of course.”

 

Smoking with Richie was a series of blurred lines and laughing until he cried and started coughing and then laughed again. Eddie would lean back against the wall, his friends somehow eventually gathered with them and the theater kids, Richie’s head in his lap as he went on and on and on about something that doesn’t matter and doesn’t make sense but has a lot to do with a play the school did. He would pet Richie’s hair and scratch his short nails against his scalp, and no one thought it was weird. No one stared at him for the wrong reason this time. They were just looking at this person that he loved and listened to him talk. It’s all Eddie had ever wanted to do.

 

Everything was bright and blue and muffled Queen and halos on street lamps. Maybe everything could work out the way it was meant to. This is what he was meant for. This kind of life and electricity and love.

 

The burning in his throat matched the feeling in his chest. For the first time ever, the burning felt good.


End file.
